Bill Chappell

Bill Chappell is a writer and producer who currently works on The Two Way, NPR's flagship news portal. In the past, he has edited and coordinated digital features for Morning Edition and Fresh Air, in addition to editing the rundown of All Things Considered. He frequently contributes to other NPR blogs, such as All Tech Considered and The Salt.

Chappell's work at NPR has ranged from being the site's first full-time homepage editor to being the lead writer and editor on the London 2012 Olympics blog, The Torch. His assignments have included being the lead web producer for NPR's trip to Asia's Grand Trunk Road, as well as establishing the Peabody Award-winning StoryCorps on NPR.org.

In 2009, Chappell was a key editorial member of the small team that redesigned NPR's web site. One year later, the site won its first Peabody Award, along with the National Press Foundation's Excellence in Online Journalism award.

At NPR, Chappell has trained both digital and radio staff to use digital tools to tell compelling stories, in addition to "evangelizing" — promoting more collaboration between legacy and digital departments.

Prior to joining NPR in late 2003, Chappell worked on the Assignment Desk at CNN International, handling coverage in areas from the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America, and coordinating CNN's pool coverage out of Qatar during the Iraq war.

Chappell's work for CNN also included producing Web stories and editing digital video for SI.com, and editing and producing stories for CNN.com's features division.

Before joining CNN, Chappell wrote about movies, restaurants and music for alternative weeklies, in addition to his first job: editing the police blotter.

A holder of bachelor's degrees in English and History from the University of Georgia, he attended graduate school for English Literature at the University of South Carolina.

Prince — the Purple One, who reeled off pop hits in five different decades — has died at age 57. The shocking news was confirmed by Prince's publicist after reports that police were investigating a death at his Paisley Park compound outside Minneapolis.

"It is with profound sadness that I am confirming that the legendary, iconic performer Prince Rogers Nelson has died at his Paisley Park residence this morning at the age of 57," publicist Yvette Noel-Schure said. "There are no further details as to the cause of death at this time."

A buyback of emissions-cheating cars was one solution Volkswagen offered in federal court Thursday, outlining an agreement between the carmaker and the Justice Department over hundreds of thousands of diesel vehicles that were sold in the U.S. despite not meeting pollution standards.

Car owners would be able to choose between having their vehicle fixed or accepting a buyback; financial details weren't revealed about the plan, which both the government and VW are calling an "agreement in principle."

Joanie Laurer, who overcame a troubled home life in Rochester, N.Y., to win an international following as the pro wrestler Chyna, has died at age 45, according to her official website and World Wrestling Entertainment. Police found her body at her home in Redondo Beach, Calif., on Wednesday, according to local media.

A large boat that sank in the Mediterranean Sea between Libya and Italy may have been carrying as many as 500 people who lost their lives, according to a U.N. Refugee Agency team that spoke to survivors of the sinking.

It would be one of the worst catastrophes suffered by refugees and migrants in the past year, if officials are able to confirm details provided by the 41 survivors.

Nearly five years after a federal jury found them guilty of either gunning down unarmed civilians or covering up the incident on New Orleans' Danziger Bridge, five former police officers have entered guilty pleas as part of a deal with the government. The deal sharply reduces the penalties they faced before their initial convictions were overturned in 2013 over prosecutorial misconduct.

The judge in the case accepted the terms of the deal shortly before 1 p.m. local time, after a hearing on the case began around noon.

The cars in question are Mitsubishi's eK Wagon and eK Space, as well as the Nissan Dayz and Dayz Roox (which the industrial giant made for Nissan Motors). While the scandal seems to be limited to the Japanese domestic market, Mitsubishi says it is now investigating vehicles it made for overseas markets as well.

They're a month old. The time has come to give names to the two baby eagles that hatched under the watchful eyes of both their parents — and legions of webcam viewers who have been following their growth in the National Arboretum in Washington, D.C.

You can vote on the eaglets' names via the Facebook page for the group Friends of the National Arboretum. Voting began Tuesday and will run through next week, closing just before midnight on April 24.

Two Ethiopian runners wore the golden laurels denoting winners of the Boston Marathon Monday, marking the first time in the race's 120 years that Ethiopian racers won both the men's and women's divisions.

For the men, it was newcomer Lemi Berhanu Hayle, 21; for the women, it was Atsede Baysa, 29, whose career includes wins in Paris and Chicago.

A federal appeals court has affirmed an NFL settlement with retired players that could cost the league $1 billion to handle brain-injury claims over the next 65 years, rejecting appeals from players who disagreed with the terms of the deal.

British police are investigating what could be the first known case of a drone colliding with a passenger aircraft, after a pilot told authorities that he believed his jet hit a drone as it flew into Heathrow Airport from Geneva Sunday.

"The flight landed at Heathrow Terminal 5 safely," police say. But they add that "an object, believed to be a drone, had struck the front of the aircraft."

The 30 teams in the NBA will soon be opening a new revenue stream: their jerseys. The league's board of governors approved the sale of sponsorship patches Friday morning, clearing the way for sponsors' logos to appear on jerseys for the 2017-2018 season.

The corporate logos will be about 2.5 inches square and will appear on the left shoulder — opposite Nike's swoosh symbol, which will also be added to jerseys in 2017, under a deal that was signed last summer.

Belgian Transport Minister Jacqueline Galant resigned Friday, after enduring days of criticism that became more pointed after a European Commission report from last year — finding flaws in Belgian airport security — was leaked.

One week after he formally received a bill to designate the Bible as Tennessee's state book, Gov. Bill Haslam has vetoed the measure. Critics say the bill isn't constitutional — and that it equates the Bible to the Tennessee walking horse or the Tennessee cave salamander.

The bill's backers are pledging to try to override the veto, which comes a year after similar legislation failed.

Saying its customers "have a right to know when the government obtains a warrant to read their emails" — and that Microsoft has a right to tell them about gag orders — the tech giant has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Justice Department.

Microsoft is asking a judge to declare part of a federal law, specifically 18 U.S.C. § 2705(b), unconstitutional under both the First and Fourth Amendments.

It's a beer with a message — and its brewers say it's a simple one. Responding to North Carolina's HB2 law that voids cities' anti-discrimination rules, two of the state's brewers are creating a new beer: the Don't Be Mean to People: A Golden Rule Saison.

Responding to criticisms over his state's controversial new law that voids cities' anti-discrimination rules protecting members of the LGBT community, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory has issued an executive order that "seeks legislation to reinstate the right to sue in state court for discrimination."

A jury trial is now set for a lawsuit that says members of Led Zeppelin plagiarized a key element of the best-selling song "Stairway to Heaven." The estate of Randy Wolfe, the late guitarist of the band Spirit, initially filed the federal lawsuit two years ago.

Pope Francis has appointed Archbishop Christophe Pierre, the apostolic nuncio in Mexico, to the same position in the U.S., replacing the Vatican's ambassador who set up the pope's meeting with controversial Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis last fall.

The move had been anticipated since the exiting nuncio, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, reached the mandatory retirement age of 75 earlier this year.

It's the kind of shot that belongs on a pool table, not a golf course. But Louis Oosthuizen was playing in the final round of the 2016 Masters, and his tee shot was instantly called the craziest in an unlikely trio of holes-in-one made on the same hole Sunday.

It's the kind of shot that belongs on a pool table, not a golf course. But Louis Oosthuizen was playing in the final round of the 2016 Masters, and his tee shot was instantly called the craziest in an unlikely trio of holes-in-one made on the same hole Sunday.

Days after they declared a spacecraft emergency over the Kepler space telescope, NASA engineers say the craft has now recovered and that they're working to figure out what happened.

Kepler, which is currently nearly 75 million miles away from Earth, placed itself into Emergency Mode sometime in the middle of last week. But it wasn't until a scheduled contact on Thursday that mission engineers discovered the problem. That led NASA to declare a wider emergency, giving the mission priority access to communications through its Deep Space Network.

Days after they declared a spacecraft emergency over the Kepler space telescope, NASA engineers say the craft has now recovered and that they're working to figure out what happened.

Kepler, which is currently nearly 75 million miles away from Earth, placed itself into Emergency Mode sometime in the middle of last week. But it wasn't until a scheduled contact on Thursday that mission engineers discovered the problem. That led NASA to declare a wider emergency, giving the mission priority access to communications through its Deep Space Network.

The number of tigers in the wild has risen from an estimated 3,200 in 2010 to about 3,890 in 2016 — a gain of more than 20 percent after a century of decline, according to the World Wildlife Fund. The group says the tiger populations have grown in at least four countries: India, Russia, Nepal and Bhutan.

A naval officer faces charges that range from espionage to adultery in a case involving the U.S. Navy's Patrol and Reconnaissance Group, which collects signals intelligence. Both the FBI and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service are investigating the officer, identified as Lt. Cmdr. Edward Lin.

Lin "wrongfully transported material classified as Secret" and didn't report that material being compromised; he's also accused of failing to report foreign contacts, according to a charging document that emerged after a preliminary hearing Friday.

Nearly five months after a "wanted" bulletin tied him to the Paris terrorist attacks, Mohamed Abrini has been arrested in Belgium. Public broadcaster RTBF also says Abrini may be the "man in the hat" wanted in connection to last month's bombings in Brussels.

A research team is now working to put a massive drill into the the Gulf of Mexico's seafloor to help peel back 65 million years of history. Their goal: to secure a nearly mile-deep core sample from the Chicxulub crater that's commonly linked to the end of the dinosaur era.

"There's a lot of questions about mass extinction events, including all the extinction or kill mechanisms out there," says one of the research team's leaders, Sean Gulick of the University of Texas, Austin.

It must have seemed a straightforward way to honor a U.S. Supreme Court justice who was famous for, among other things, prizing straightforwardness. But then people began to titter about the unintended acronym of the Antonin Scalia School of Law — and now George Mason University has tweaked the name.

In what is believed to be a first, the Bible could be adopted as a symbol of Tennessee, after the Legislature narrowly approved a bill designating "the Holy Bible as the official state book." The measure now goes to Gov. Bill Haslam.

"Critics called the proposal both unconstitutional and sacrilegious," Nashville Public Radio reports. "They also pointed out there are many versions of the Bible, none of which are specified in the resolution."

Saying they found "a darker link between religion and the evolution of modern hierarchical societies"than has been previously suggested, a group of scientists say ritual human sacrifice promoted stratified social systems – and helped to sustain inherited class systems once they were established.